Forum: Photography

Subject: Scanning

azy opened this issue on Sep 13, 2002 ยท 10 posts

azy posted Fri, 13 September 2002 at 1:15 PM

This first photo is my neg scanner, the photo is black is very black & white is very white.

Eggiwegs! I would like... to smash them!

starshuffler posted Fri, 13 September 2002 at 1:41 PM

My neg scanner is screwy that way too, but I only get problems with color neg scans. My usual quick stop-gap lazy method of correcting this problem is fiddling with brightness and then levels. Luckily I don't have to do that often... (too lazy... hehehe) Don't take my word for it... there should be a better way to do that... :-/ (*

azy posted Fri, 13 September 2002 at 1:47 PM

This photo has been printed by myself ans scanned at 240dpi. I like the tonal range on this print, but to save time in the darkroom I would like to achive the same tonal range in photoshop. Anybody have any ideas?

Eggiwegs! I would like... to smash them!

mysnapz posted Fri, 13 September 2002 at 2:02 PM

Azy I am not sure of your scanner software, but mine has three settings for quality your sample scan is very much like the results I get on the fast scan setting, which is the lowest setting, it might be worth a look. As for correction in Photoshop try using levels move the slider from both ends to where the graph starts and then tweak the centre slider, this works well for correcting my scans.

Those who do not want to imitate anything, produce nothing. Salvador Dali

jacoggins posted Fri, 13 September 2002 at 3:58 PM

azy, you might look at a program called dcenhancer from www.mediachance.com it's a free download program and I find it very useful in correcting problems like you have. It has a mid-level tona adjustment that brings pics up to snuf. I use it a lot! There are a couple of other freebies there that I use also. Check the site out, lottsa neat for purchase stuff also! Jack

azy posted Fri, 13 September 2002 at 4:14 PM

This neg was scanned with the default settings on my neg scanner

Eggiwegs! I would like... to smash them!

azy posted Fri, 13 September 2002 at 4:19 PM

And on this neg the contrast was set at -70 at the scanning stage. What do you think an inprovement! comments welcome Thank to jacoggins, mysnapz and Star for the ideas that lead me to a acceptable photo.

Eggiwegs! I would like... to smash them!

Misha883 posted Fri, 13 September 2002 at 5:38 PM

#7 is much improved over #6, and very likely better than what you could get by tweaking #6 in photoshop. You didn't mention what scanner you are using? [I'm sort of maybe shopping for a new one.] I've been using ViewScan software from www.hamrick.com, which works pretty well on my old Nikon LS-1000.

Slynky posted Fri, 13 September 2002 at 8:49 PM

one bad thing about photoshop, its greyscale mode is 8bit, and as such only works up to 256 shades of grey. Very odd actually, especially when compared to a program such as zbrush, which isn't photo oriented at all, but its greyscale mode works at 24bit i believe, something like 65000 shades of grey. of course, maybe all this changed in photoshop 7, i dunno.

McF posted Sat, 14 September 2002 at 6:16 AM

24 bit would be 16,7 millions shades, so I doubt it somehow. maybe its 10 or 12 bit? 16 bit would be 65K shades - something you get when you save your files in 48 bit color tiff (possible in PS and PSPS) after scanning.. which would be extrapolaion anyway, since I don't think the scanner is 48 bit. Maybe 36 bit (would give you 12 bit greyscale which is plenty I think).